Most people finish thier education and get a 9-5 job ,many of you here i assume including myself got into IM when we were in the college and just wanted to make some money online ,Tell us your story how you got into IM and how its going.
What made you get into IM ? Tell us your story
- Thread starter pofigy
- Start date
I hate schedules
I started working in IM as an employee, so it wasn't because I didn't want to have a steady job or something. I just thought it was interesting and fun.
First freelance gig I had was actually offline, my private english teacher (native speaker, he was from Canada) asked me to make him a website. I was 12 at the time. He paid some tiny tiny amount (makes sense since I was a kid and website was crappy too, not on purpose). I was so excited, spent everything on book about Flash @Rem , didn't understand shit from that book but I was happy lol. Later on I started searching for clients myself on social media. So basically it's the first work experience and always when something happens and I don't have anything else first thing I do is freelancing a bit before I find something better. That's what I usually do for stability while other people look for a full-time job. Never had a 9 to 5.
Obviously the money earning potential
I actually was a member of digital point forum which is like non existent today and there I got to know about bhw via a member of the forum and the rest as they say is history
I actually was a member of digital point forum which is like non existent today and there I got to know about bhw via a member of the forum and the rest as they say is history
Sure! Here’s a polished and clear rewrite of your story:
Let me briefly share my journey.
I came across a post about making money with micro niche sites (MNS) and decided to give it a try, investing the money I had set aside for living expenses. I soon realized that building traffic and generating income would take time. So, I flipped the site and learned how to build MNS effectively.
With the money I made from that sale, I bought a bunch of .info domains for around $2 each, built MNS using exact match domains (EMDs), and successfully sold them all.
Later, I got into the Google developer business ,selling developer accounts and reskinning utility apps ,which turned out to be quite profitable.
Eventually, due to personal commitments, I stepped back from many projects and now only manage a limited number of things.
back2form
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Hot Rod
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IM is not related to my Studies..,
After completing Instrumentation engineering, I was trying for job related to Studies.. In the meanwhile I got opportunity to work in a local SEO company..
I thought, I can improve content skills & use free internet to apply for jobs ..
I told our boss, and he agreed this job as temporary, he knows I will move anytime when I get other jobs related to my studies.. Later few months, promoted as marketing manager and got Good incentives , high earnings which made me forgot Searching for other jobs..
This is the real story that made me get into IM ..
Now, I really forgot what is instrumentation engineering now
After completing Instrumentation engineering, I was trying for job related to Studies.. In the meanwhile I got opportunity to work in a local SEO company..
I thought, I can improve content skills & use free internet to apply for jobs ..
I told our boss, and he agreed this job as temporary, he knows I will move anytime when I get other jobs related to my studies.. Later few months, promoted as marketing manager and got Good incentives , high earnings which made me forgot Searching for other jobs..
This is the real story that made me get into IM ..
Now, I really forgot what is instrumentation engineering now
OK if I get enough thumbs up. I will reply back with a long essay but you better read it because me just saying I done X doesn't cut it.
It will also take me a good little while to write it up, I was going to do an audio file for @Zwielicht this week based on our conversions but I can type it for all to share. It will be long tho...
Note:
I type how I talk, I also dont want to be attacked by the grammar police nor the spell checking wizards
It will also take me a good little while to write it up, I was going to do an audio file for @Zwielicht this week based on our conversions but I can type it for all to share. It will be long tho...
Note:
I type how I talk, I also dont want to be attacked by the grammar police nor the spell checking wizards
Your story on that business is really cool
Taught me a lot about understanding datasheets rather than just looking at the numbers in a column...
Found a really cool video you'd like just for the shenanigans in place
I got into it because I had a "friend" tell me every morning he'd complete a project at the end of the week, every week, for about 2 years... Different projects, failed projects, rubbed off on me really
Came here, found some old people, started trying to think like an old person and start making businesses rather than get rich quick schemes
very little success, but peace of mind trumps all. I've done some cool shit
Ok so you want to know how I got into IM eh. It’s not straight forward at least for me that’s why I think to answer this I got to go back to the start.
I’ll be skipping super personal stuff and info and some details I really don’t want the dots connecting back to me. If they do so be it. If not even better. I’ll just focus on the journey to IM.
I’ll start with I’m not proud of anything I’ve done I’m also not ashamed of it either.
I left home when I was 14. Not by choice. I spent time living rough before living with family sort of on a rotation basis as no one really had a pot to piss in so responsibility was shared – I needed to make cash and probably like most people I started life selling sweets in school.
That was my first taste of business.
Now the only decent thing my family done for me was put me into Martial Arts at the age of 5. Once I hit 18 I started to fight, this pretty much was my life it paid for my first house and some land I’ve purchased along the way.
I grew up in an area where houses where sub £12,000 to buy and earning money weekly fighting didn’t take long to save it was brutal though.
Around this time as I tried to make that my full time job as that’s all I ever wanted to do I needed to earn extra income as not every weekend I could fight and this is where I started to do door-2-door selling. IF you want to learn how to speak to people, deal with rejection and just talk bollocks I recommend it.
It was hard but it was like a competition I had to fight every sale for a paycheck.
Fighting brought me a lot of rewards traveling was the biggest one and I started to travel the world to compete I’ve been just about everywhere – I got a few places I want to vist when I retire and spend months at a time there but that’s for anther time.
Around this time I started to bring electronics back from the US to the UK and I could resell them for a good markup. This was kind of a lightbulb moment and enter the tail end of the .com bubble.
I scaled my “smuggle a camera or cd player/ mp3 player in a suitcase” business model to a full on import and export company the timing couldn’t have been more perfect that business with a simple £1600 investment grew to be turning over mid 8 figures in a VERY short time.
The interest was EASY back then. But so was everything else.
I also started to become greedy and that’s when if I’m honest I started to run scams. The dawn of compact flash memory cards.
( I don’t want to take credit for this but I’m probably part of the reason why companies no longer publish full packaging materials online i.e the full artwork, stickers, packaging the lot, the interent was a little different then no one really knew what to publish online if you ask me )
So I used to import shit CF cards (compact flash) and I discovered I could also buy the blister packs from china (clear empty ones) and with the aid of some high end Konica Minolta printers I used to print out the stickers from a VERY high end company and the paper packaging insert and resell them as those.
Cards used to retail for 90-300+ I think back then and I was buying shit unbranded OEM cards for a fraction of that I couldn’t make money quick engouh.
That wasn’t enough though a I found local TV factories by me and I used to buy returned and B grade stock. Pay people to clean them up using emory cloth (I think its called) it’s a super fine sand paper. Used to polish out all the scratch marks, and then import all the packaging from china, korea or india depending on where it was made, shrink wrap it all up and sell a shit B rated tv as AA new stock! Lol
There was loads more but you get the idea.
Making money was easy both selling online and my shitty fucking scams. WTF was I thinking. I just loved the hustle.
MY Biggest problem at this point in my life was I was making too much money and having left home with nothing I never knew how to handle it. I used to spend 1000s every weekend on coke, drink, women, betting, just fucking bullshit.
It didn’t matter how much I spent Friday – Sunday come Monday id have made it all back in sales anyway or selling “quality products at the market”
I just couldn’t handle it I spent 1000s on shit, also I discovered people are so fake it’s unreal
Anyway to keep this short that bubble popped. We had a banking issue which turned out not to be our fault and we took the bank to court and settled. (I don’t want to disclose much more than that)
I was advised to put money into stocks and shares ISAs that pay out a dividend monthly as well as some property and a pension, the account I hired to go through my books as part of the legal battle was always looking at me like a total fucking asshole with the money I used to spend and you know what he was right.
IM A FUCKING TWAT WITH CASH.
So I now had money, I had this dividend thing I never really understood it (but I do now I recommend that for savings for all people)
Anyway I never really learnt my lesson.
.com bubble over BUT I could still make money. I done it before yeah? Lets do it again.
I set up I think 15-17 business over the course of many years and they all failed. EVERYFUCKING ONE OF THEM.
I’ll be honest you. You know why? Because I wanted that life style back. I wanted the money, the power that came with it and the lifestyle I wanted it bad. Every time the business got traction I drained the cash flow on my greedy fucking self.
You know what changed as well after .com? Making money with scams got harder, the police got wiser and I got into some shall we say “trouble” being arrested for fraud isn’t fun let me tell you.
No matter how much I changed and adapted and tried to run away. The police as much as I don’t like them. They aint stupid. Hey ho.
So I gave up. I had good money coming in. I knew how to market and use the internet for my needs and life was good. My wife has a very good job between the both of us we bring in over 180k
I didn’t really know what to do at this point so my wife decided to get me into gardening and growing potatoes of all things.
You know what? I loved it. I wish someone showed me how to garden years ago id probably have taken a different path but id probably not be here also.
So I left everything and just focused on growing food and becoming self sufficient. What was mad about that everyone told me I couldn’t do it. No one in the UK that I knew was doing anything like this so I started to look and Canada and North America as a whole and figured they have the same climate as us but they just cram everything they need in 3-5 months.
Thankfully we don’t have the harsh winters but the growing window is similar I’ll copy that there. Again everyone laughed.
Problem is growing advice on a back of a packet of seed in some cases has not changed for 100 years but the climate has so why not adapt?
I figured other people want to do this and have the same kind of mentality as me so why not “make a business”
Make a fucking businsess be fucked.
I couldn’t I failed so many time why would this be different. I sat down and had a long honest talk with myself and just like typing this out ITS HARD. I figured I was the problem so how could I change that, what could be different?
*one of the things I learnt years ago was money doesn’t make me happy, I thought it did, but it doesn’t and it’s easy to say that when you have a 7 figues to your name, but it doesn’t, being rich for me is not asking how much something costs.
I live a MR GRAY life style I look like a bum but I can buy anything I want I’m happy. I could do all this.
So what has to be different? My children.
I figured let’s give them a better life than I ever had to start – OK my daughter is 16 this year so check that box for not kicking her out BUT all them failed businesses it was ME I was the CURSE so let’s not make this business about me.
It’s for the kids. AND it REALLY REALLY IS. I take no income to this day from the company both my children can decide when they are older if they want to own it or sell it.
If I got offered £3.2m + Id sell it and give the kids half and they are set to do whatever they want to do in this world.
So gulp, that’s what I done.
I set up a business to sell gardening “stuff” seeds, and what not online.
I knew how to find customers I done that before but remember all the dodgy shit? Well this is how I started it, before GDPR I was on an allotment committee and I got sent an email with CC of I think 180-220ish allotment sites (private and council owned)
So to get started with the business I just thought it I’ll SPAM Them lol.
I think I had 10 sites come back and buy from me.
Now years ago when I needed to prove this business would work eBay was the best tool for me I could test the product, the market and set a price point for it and test a product to an audience and see if it would work.
That’s all I needed. I started with 14 product lines in my first year and we have now just over 400 products with 500+ in development yet to go live.
Now when I started this I was worried past daemons would come back so I played everything super cook. I decided to do everything on a budget as best I can because if this goes tits up I’m fucking it up for the kids not for me.
I started to target all SEO stuff like the crumbs fuck the cake. If I collect enough crumbs I’ll make a fucking cake and it took EXACTLY 5 years to make a cake!
We landed page 1 pos 3 for our main money keyword RIGHT as Boris goes on TV and tells us the UK is going into lockdown.
Something strange started to happen. My phoen started to ping A LOT sales where coming in FAST. 30-50 every second, 100 every second my phone turned off due to heat. WTF was going on.
I was ranking 3rd and I was the only store online accepting orders at 8:15pm at night. I took so much money between 8:05 and 8:35pm it beat all the previous years in business totally.
IT WAS AMAZING.
It felt like all this hard work came in. Then the welsh fucking government said you couldn’t have people in work if you couldn’t provide a 2m+ safe work space, well I couldn’t. So it was just me.
We opened the store for an hour every morning 9am – 10am in that time frame we took 6 figures every hour like clock work.
I didn’t know what to do I had success before at the start but nothing like this. Do I stop do I quit what? No! NO! There will be never another time to make money like this keep it going.
Mid April I took the decision to close the store for a month because I couldn’t keep up. It was impossible but brilliant.
SKIP tons of stuff here as I’m up to 2100 words.
Anyhow I got through COVID lots of lessons learnt lots of rewards. At this time I was still I think on BHW and I started to mentor a lot of people and got friendly with LOTS and I decided to hire someone.
We where friends. I wasn’t the best to work with but such is life. We got on and I don’t know if it was laziness or just didn’t like me or what but it never worked out… he tanked the site. Maybe on purpose maybe on accidenet but it was gone.
I had a company turning over £2m+ to struggling to be able to make a £2 sale daily. I had all the staff all the over heads of a million pound company but no income it was shit.
Life moves on.
What time I had left we decided to go through the site and found out of 300+ products only 50 where correct. It was tough. Was this my fault for asking him to do the job or mine for not hand holding – I’ll never know. We hardly speak. I don’t think I blame him as much now, it was also my fault.
So yeah here I am fucked again.
WTF has happened?
I got past my ego.
I got past covid.
I made it as a “proper” business owner but here I am. Fucked.
I didn’t know what to do, I cried I was fucked up.
So spoke to someone who knows a lot about IM and said look you proven the business works. You had hockey stick growth without building a brand army that’s my problem.
I need an army of customers 50k or more that all spend £1 or more per month to cover my costs.
So that’s what I done. I let most of my staff go. I paid the rest out of my own pocket and we built a brand army. Fixed all the site issues and started to rank in google BUT things will never be the same we are no where near where we used to be SEO wise.
SAD but TRUE. WE ARE STRONGER.
You see when I thought it was all fucked and we needed to build an army I didn’t think we could focus on the same keywords Googles trust in us for them was at an all time low.
So I started to branch out into the corporate word and whole sale word for our products. It paid off, our ranking is now more diverse than it ever was. We have worked with some major coffee companies, some big medical brands, insurance brands, banks and 100s of more to name a few.
We have a corporate arm to the business that generates over £1.3m in income every year all because of 1 fuck up. Our wholesale arm is about to hit £400k this year and growing due to expanding into drop shipping.
You see I had to pivot I wanted this to grow. I need it to work not for me. But for my kids.
So I now have 17 staff and we do just fine both as a retail, corp and wholesale company.
Back last year I hit a low point. I took 9 weeks off including phased returns it was closer to 12-16 weeks I even put the company up for sale and ALMOST sold it. Had an offer for more than I wanted. My kids would be set. Perfect.
I couldn’t do it. As much as I hated it back then due to burn out.
I really LOVE what I do. I don’t know what I would do and sitting on my bum isn’t me.
I’ve put a mid 6 figures in a trust for both my children out of my own money. So they got enough to get started. One day I’ll sell it and hopefully it pays off. Even if I die they will have more money than most of this forum.
I just hope I don’t regret and they forgive me for not selling. I couldn’t I don’t know what id do. This thing that I have no real financial incentive. No income from. Is just a glorified hobby I love it more than I thought I ever would.
The one good thing about the offer to buy made it all real. It made what I do REAL. It’s worth it.
So I have plans to expand.
Three at 7 pages in word and taken me almost 45min to type. That’s my story. I could add 7 or more pages but that’s enough.
I can hustle, I can market, I know how to sell to people. I’m probably a crook. But I like to think I’m a good dad and better husband.
I’ll be skipping super personal stuff and info and some details I really don’t want the dots connecting back to me. If they do so be it. If not even better. I’ll just focus on the journey to IM.
I’ll start with I’m not proud of anything I’ve done I’m also not ashamed of it either.
I left home when I was 14. Not by choice. I spent time living rough before living with family sort of on a rotation basis as no one really had a pot to piss in so responsibility was shared – I needed to make cash and probably like most people I started life selling sweets in school.
That was my first taste of business.
Now the only decent thing my family done for me was put me into Martial Arts at the age of 5. Once I hit 18 I started to fight, this pretty much was my life it paid for my first house and some land I’ve purchased along the way.
I grew up in an area where houses where sub £12,000 to buy and earning money weekly fighting didn’t take long to save it was brutal though.
Around this time as I tried to make that my full time job as that’s all I ever wanted to do I needed to earn extra income as not every weekend I could fight and this is where I started to do door-2-door selling. IF you want to learn how to speak to people, deal with rejection and just talk bollocks I recommend it.
It was hard but it was like a competition I had to fight every sale for a paycheck.
Fighting brought me a lot of rewards traveling was the biggest one and I started to travel the world to compete I’ve been just about everywhere – I got a few places I want to vist when I retire and spend months at a time there but that’s for anther time.
Around this time I started to bring electronics back from the US to the UK and I could resell them for a good markup. This was kind of a lightbulb moment and enter the tail end of the .com bubble.
I scaled my “smuggle a camera or cd player/ mp3 player in a suitcase” business model to a full on import and export company the timing couldn’t have been more perfect that business with a simple £1600 investment grew to be turning over mid 8 figures in a VERY short time.
The interest was EASY back then. But so was everything else.
I also started to become greedy and that’s when if I’m honest I started to run scams. The dawn of compact flash memory cards.
( I don’t want to take credit for this but I’m probably part of the reason why companies no longer publish full packaging materials online i.e the full artwork, stickers, packaging the lot, the interent was a little different then no one really knew what to publish online if you ask me )
So I used to import shit CF cards (compact flash) and I discovered I could also buy the blister packs from china (clear empty ones) and with the aid of some high end Konica Minolta printers I used to print out the stickers from a VERY high end company and the paper packaging insert and resell them as those.
Cards used to retail for 90-300+ I think back then and I was buying shit unbranded OEM cards for a fraction of that I couldn’t make money quick engouh.
That wasn’t enough though a I found local TV factories by me and I used to buy returned and B grade stock. Pay people to clean them up using emory cloth (I think its called) it’s a super fine sand paper. Used to polish out all the scratch marks, and then import all the packaging from china, korea or india depending on where it was made, shrink wrap it all up and sell a shit B rated tv as AA new stock! Lol
There was loads more but you get the idea.
Making money was easy both selling online and my shitty fucking scams. WTF was I thinking. I just loved the hustle.
MY Biggest problem at this point in my life was I was making too much money and having left home with nothing I never knew how to handle it. I used to spend 1000s every weekend on coke, drink, women, betting, just fucking bullshit.
It didn’t matter how much I spent Friday – Sunday come Monday id have made it all back in sales anyway or selling “quality products at the market”
I just couldn’t handle it I spent 1000s on shit, also I discovered people are so fake it’s unreal
Anyway to keep this short that bubble popped. We had a banking issue which turned out not to be our fault and we took the bank to court and settled. (I don’t want to disclose much more than that)
I was advised to put money into stocks and shares ISAs that pay out a dividend monthly as well as some property and a pension, the account I hired to go through my books as part of the legal battle was always looking at me like a total fucking asshole with the money I used to spend and you know what he was right.
IM A FUCKING TWAT WITH CASH.
So I now had money, I had this dividend thing I never really understood it (but I do now I recommend that for savings for all people)
Anyway I never really learnt my lesson.
.com bubble over BUT I could still make money. I done it before yeah? Lets do it again.
I set up I think 15-17 business over the course of many years and they all failed. EVERYFUCKING ONE OF THEM.
I’ll be honest you. You know why? Because I wanted that life style back. I wanted the money, the power that came with it and the lifestyle I wanted it bad. Every time the business got traction I drained the cash flow on my greedy fucking self.
You know what changed as well after .com? Making money with scams got harder, the police got wiser and I got into some shall we say “trouble” being arrested for fraud isn’t fun let me tell you.
No matter how much I changed and adapted and tried to run away. The police as much as I don’t like them. They aint stupid. Hey ho.
So I gave up. I had good money coming in. I knew how to market and use the internet for my needs and life was good. My wife has a very good job between the both of us we bring in over 180k
I didn’t really know what to do at this point so my wife decided to get me into gardening and growing potatoes of all things.
You know what? I loved it. I wish someone showed me how to garden years ago id probably have taken a different path but id probably not be here also.
So I left everything and just focused on growing food and becoming self sufficient. What was mad about that everyone told me I couldn’t do it. No one in the UK that I knew was doing anything like this so I started to look and Canada and North America as a whole and figured they have the same climate as us but they just cram everything they need in 3-5 months.
Thankfully we don’t have the harsh winters but the growing window is similar I’ll copy that there. Again everyone laughed.
Problem is growing advice on a back of a packet of seed in some cases has not changed for 100 years but the climate has so why not adapt?
I figured other people want to do this and have the same kind of mentality as me so why not “make a business”
Make a fucking businsess be fucked.
I couldn’t I failed so many time why would this be different. I sat down and had a long honest talk with myself and just like typing this out ITS HARD. I figured I was the problem so how could I change that, what could be different?
*one of the things I learnt years ago was money doesn’t make me happy, I thought it did, but it doesn’t and it’s easy to say that when you have a 7 figues to your name, but it doesn’t, being rich for me is not asking how much something costs.
I live a MR GRAY life style I look like a bum but I can buy anything I want I’m happy. I could do all this.
So what has to be different? My children.
I figured let’s give them a better life than I ever had to start – OK my daughter is 16 this year so check that box for not kicking her out BUT all them failed businesses it was ME I was the CURSE so let’s not make this business about me.
It’s for the kids. AND it REALLY REALLY IS. I take no income to this day from the company both my children can decide when they are older if they want to own it or sell it.
If I got offered £3.2m + Id sell it and give the kids half and they are set to do whatever they want to do in this world.
So gulp, that’s what I done.
I set up a business to sell gardening “stuff” seeds, and what not online.
I knew how to find customers I done that before but remember all the dodgy shit? Well this is how I started it, before GDPR I was on an allotment committee and I got sent an email with CC of I think 180-220ish allotment sites (private and council owned)
So to get started with the business I just thought it I’ll SPAM Them lol.
I think I had 10 sites come back and buy from me.
Now years ago when I needed to prove this business would work eBay was the best tool for me I could test the product, the market and set a price point for it and test a product to an audience and see if it would work.
That’s all I needed. I started with 14 product lines in my first year and we have now just over 400 products with 500+ in development yet to go live.
Now when I started this I was worried past daemons would come back so I played everything super cook. I decided to do everything on a budget as best I can because if this goes tits up I’m fucking it up for the kids not for me.
I started to target all SEO stuff like the crumbs fuck the cake. If I collect enough crumbs I’ll make a fucking cake and it took EXACTLY 5 years to make a cake!
We landed page 1 pos 3 for our main money keyword RIGHT as Boris goes on TV and tells us the UK is going into lockdown.
Something strange started to happen. My phoen started to ping A LOT sales where coming in FAST. 30-50 every second, 100 every second my phone turned off due to heat. WTF was going on.
I was ranking 3rd and I was the only store online accepting orders at 8:15pm at night. I took so much money between 8:05 and 8:35pm it beat all the previous years in business totally.
IT WAS AMAZING.
It felt like all this hard work came in. Then the welsh fucking government said you couldn’t have people in work if you couldn’t provide a 2m+ safe work space, well I couldn’t. So it was just me.
We opened the store for an hour every morning 9am – 10am in that time frame we took 6 figures every hour like clock work.
I didn’t know what to do I had success before at the start but nothing like this. Do I stop do I quit what? No! NO! There will be never another time to make money like this keep it going.
Mid April I took the decision to close the store for a month because I couldn’t keep up. It was impossible but brilliant.
SKIP tons of stuff here as I’m up to 2100 words.
Anyhow I got through COVID lots of lessons learnt lots of rewards. At this time I was still I think on BHW and I started to mentor a lot of people and got friendly with LOTS and I decided to hire someone.
We where friends. I wasn’t the best to work with but such is life. We got on and I don’t know if it was laziness or just didn’t like me or what but it never worked out… he tanked the site. Maybe on purpose maybe on accidenet but it was gone.
I had a company turning over £2m+ to struggling to be able to make a £2 sale daily. I had all the staff all the over heads of a million pound company but no income it was shit.
Life moves on.
What time I had left we decided to go through the site and found out of 300+ products only 50 where correct. It was tough. Was this my fault for asking him to do the job or mine for not hand holding – I’ll never know. We hardly speak. I don’t think I blame him as much now, it was also my fault.
So yeah here I am fucked again.
WTF has happened?
I got past my ego.
I got past covid.
I made it as a “proper” business owner but here I am. Fucked.
I didn’t know what to do, I cried I was fucked up.
So spoke to someone who knows a lot about IM and said look you proven the business works. You had hockey stick growth without building a brand army that’s my problem.
I need an army of customers 50k or more that all spend £1 or more per month to cover my costs.
So that’s what I done. I let most of my staff go. I paid the rest out of my own pocket and we built a brand army. Fixed all the site issues and started to rank in google BUT things will never be the same we are no where near where we used to be SEO wise.
SAD but TRUE. WE ARE STRONGER.
You see when I thought it was all fucked and we needed to build an army I didn’t think we could focus on the same keywords Googles trust in us for them was at an all time low.
So I started to branch out into the corporate word and whole sale word for our products. It paid off, our ranking is now more diverse than it ever was. We have worked with some major coffee companies, some big medical brands, insurance brands, banks and 100s of more to name a few.
We have a corporate arm to the business that generates over £1.3m in income every year all because of 1 fuck up. Our wholesale arm is about to hit £400k this year and growing due to expanding into drop shipping.
You see I had to pivot I wanted this to grow. I need it to work not for me. But for my kids.
So I now have 17 staff and we do just fine both as a retail, corp and wholesale company.
Back last year I hit a low point. I took 9 weeks off including phased returns it was closer to 12-16 weeks I even put the company up for sale and ALMOST sold it. Had an offer for more than I wanted. My kids would be set. Perfect.
I couldn’t do it. As much as I hated it back then due to burn out.
I really LOVE what I do. I don’t know what I would do and sitting on my bum isn’t me.
I’ve put a mid 6 figures in a trust for both my children out of my own money. So they got enough to get started. One day I’ll sell it and hopefully it pays off. Even if I die they will have more money than most of this forum.
I just hope I don’t regret and they forgive me for not selling. I couldn’t I don’t know what id do. This thing that I have no real financial incentive. No income from. Is just a glorified hobby I love it more than I thought I ever would.
The one good thing about the offer to buy made it all real. It made what I do REAL. It’s worth it.
So I have plans to expand.
Three at 7 pages in word and taken me almost 45min to type. That’s my story. I could add 7 or more pages but that’s enough.
I can hustle, I can market, I know how to sell to people. I’m probably a crook. But I like to think I’m a good dad and better husband.
Thank you for sharing!
My family was into import too.
Thanks for sharing about the scams, things are often too censored and you just can't get the real picture... World is what it is. Good that you're so focused on your children and bettering yourself. Good luck. Interesting about the dividends... I actually kinda wanted to start a thread and ask how to invest spare money.
Thanks for reading.
Those I mentioned was just some only a scratch on the surface really of what I used to get up to years ago. Once you start it's hard to stop. Hey ho.
Investing etc. Yes I didn't know what that was almost 20 years ago. I'm glad younger version of me listened because id not have anything without that now.
From hustling through hardship, scams, and early business failures to building a thriving gardening eCommerce brand for his children’s future, he learned that true fulfillment comes not from money but from purpose. Despite burnout and setbacks, he rebuilt from scratch, now running a multi-million-pound retail, wholesale, and corporate business he loves, but takes no income from, so his kids can one day inherit or sell it. Coke and booze were involved!!
Yeah, thanks for also mentioning the more shady stuff... The struggle is real. You go very clean to the extreme and business doesn't earn shit. It's not so simple.
Also the thing with blowing money is just too real... My family had this problem also and they actually spent everything and got into debt and I had to pay it off later
. So good that you think about your children.Fighting, so cool. I wish I was healthier and could do that, sounds amazing.